With our cart we did eighteen and twenty miles a day; quite far enough for the pedestrian in this warm climate. The first hour’s walk, from 6 to 7 A.M., was always delicious, before the full power of the sun was felt; the rest of the day was atrociously hot, especially when our road led us through steaming tropical forests and rank vegetation. Luckily for us at this season of the year the long grass in the open veldt was all burnt, and the stifling experience of walking through eight or ten feet of grass and getting no view whatsoever was spared us.
Shade for our midday halts was always precarious. African trees have the character of giving as little shade as possible, and this we found to be invariably the case. Luckily, water is everywhere abundant, and we could assuage our thirst with copious draughts of tea.
The native kraals on this road are highly uninteresting; the inhabitants are wanting altogether in that artistic tendency displayed in Mashonaland, which showed itself in carved knives, snuff-boxes, and weapons. A chief named Bandula occupies a commanding [[375]]position on a high range which we passed on our left, at the foot of which flows a stream called the Lopodzi, which delighted us with its views over the Nyangombwe Mountains, and offended us with its swampy banks, where the frogs croaked as loud as the caw of the rooks in our woods at home.
Chimoia’s kraal is a sort of half-way halt, where all waggons are now left before entering the much-dreaded ‘fly belt;’ and here my wife parted reluctantly with her horse, and transferred herself and her saddle to the back of one of the three loose asses which accompanied our cart. Most people seem to have two or three asses in their train, for fear of being utterly helpless in case of the desertion of their blacks, and all are prepared for their ultimate demise, either by the violence of the lion or the bite of the fly. One ass at Chimoia’s distinguished itself by seizing its master’s sugar-bag, and consuming it and its contents with all the greater avidity when the master and his stick turned up. All laughed; but all who had experienced the great calamity of being without sugar in this land felt deep compassion for the victim.
Chimoia’s is a scattered kraal, poor and destitute: clusters of round huts with low eaves, and doors through which one has to crawl on hands and knees.
We could get no meal here, as everyone had told us we should, and when talking over our supplies the faces of our men grew long and anxious; and if [[376]]it had not been for the kindness of other white men whom we met on our way down, famine would have been added to our other discomforts; but good fellowship and spontaneous liberality are the characteristics of all those Englishmen who have been up country, and at one time or another known what it is to be without food. At Chimoia’s ends the pleasant traffic in beads and cloth, which for months past had kept our money in our pockets. Here a rupee is asked for every commodity; and some day surprising hoards of these coins will be found in the Kaffir kraals near the coast, for they never spend them, neither do they wear them as ornaments, and it is a marvel to all what they do with them. The vegetation is very fine around Chimoia’s, and the land appears wonderfully fertile. On the top of a strangely serrated ridge of mountains behind the village is a deserted Portuguese fort, and a flagstaff with nothing floating therefrom.
Beyond Chimoia’s the streams grow more sluggish, and emit more fœtid odours, suggestive of fevers. Ragged-leaved bananas, bamboos, and tree-ferns luxuriate in all these streams, which work their way in deep channels, or dongas, across the level country.
The fall is now scarcely perceptible, and the long flat belt which girdles Africa is entered, the much-dreaded low veldt, teeming with swamps, game, and tsetse-fly. At one time you are walking through a forest of bamboos, making graceful arches overhead with their long canes, and recalling pictures of Japan; [[377]]at another time you go through palm forests, and then comes a stretch of burning open country; and at night-time, for the first time, we heard the lions roar. We lighted huge camp-fires and trembled for the safety of our eleven donkeys, for which animals lions are supposed to have a particular predilection.
Mandigo’s kraal is twenty-four miles from Chimoia’s, and to us was equally uninteresting and equally unproductive of the much-needed supplies. Some say the fly only begins here, and certainly we saw none ourselves till after Mandigo’s; and from here to Sarmento we saw plenty of it. The tsetse-fly is grey, about the size of an ordinary horse-fly, with overlapping wings. Our donkeys, poor things, got many bites, and we felt grieved at their prospective deaths. We provided them with the only remedy of which we could hear, namely, a handful of salt every night; but how this is supposed to act in counter-acting the bite of the fly I am at a loss to imagine.
Certainly this fly has many peculiarities. All domesticated quadrupeds—horses, oxen, and dogs—die from it when brought up country; whereas zebras, buffaloes, and native curs flourish amongst it with impunity, and its bite has not so much effect upon human beings as that of a common midge.